‘That was a strange outfit you wore.’
‘The viking gave it to me, he had it from somewhere else. I often fought by his side. He was a good man.’ Freda looked up, into the heart of the fire. ‘Aye, he was the best and bravest and kindest of men.’ Bitterness twisted her face. ‘Why should he not be? He came of good folk.’
And she turned swiftly away. Thorkel looked after her, tugging thoughtfully at his beard. ‘Not all the truth has she told,’ he muttered to himself, ‘but I think it is all we will ever hear.’
Even to the priest by whom she was shriven, Freda said no more than that. Afterward she went off alone and stood on a high hill looking skyward.
It was a bright day, warm for winter. The snow lay clean and white and glistening on the silent earth, and overhead the sky was high and blue.
Freda said quietly: ‘Now I have done a mortal sin, in not confessing what Skafloc and I did, yet I put the burden thereof on my own soul and will bear it to the grave. All-Father, You know our sin was too sweet and wonderful to be defiled by the eyes of men and the ugliest of names. Lay what penance You will on me, but spare him, who knew no better.’ She flushed, alone under the great sky. ‘Also, I think I feel beneath my heart the same dear stirring which you, Mary, must remember – and he shall not bear an evil name for the sake of what his parents did. Father and Mother and Son – do what You will with me, but spare the child.’
Presently she came down, feeling somewhat eased at heart. The cool air kissed the blood into her cheeks, the sunlight flamed in bronze and copper and soft-silken waves from her hair, and her gray eyes were bright. There was a smile on her lips when she met Audun Thorkelsson.
The boy was scarce older than she, but already tall and strong, a promising warrior and a good husbandman. His curly fair hair gleamed about a face blushing and shyly smiling like a girl’s, as he ran toward her.
‘I – was looking for you – Freda,’ he said when he was beside her.
‘Why, was I wanted?’ she asked.
‘No, save – well – yes, I wanted – to see you,’ he mumbled. He walked by her side, now and then stealing a glance from downcast eyes.
‘What will you do now?’ he blurted presently.
The smile faded from her mouth. She cast one woeful look up into the sky, and then almost wildly around the snowy horizon. She could not see the ocean here, but its unending voice came faintly to her ears, tireless, relentless.
‘I know not,’ she said. ‘I have no one left—’
‘But you have!’ he cried. And then his tongue seemed locked and he could say no more, however he cursed himself for it.
Winter died slowly into spring, and still Freda dwelt in Thorkel’s house. She worked endlessly, and when there was no more work to do she went for long walks, alone by choice though Audun often came along. Aasa was glad enough of help and of someone to talk to, having no daughters and few bond-women. But she did nigh all the talking. Freda said almost nothing save when she was spoken to, and even then she was apt not to hear.
For her, time was the most cruel torment, not alone in the weight of her sin and the death of her folk – those she could bear, and the new life within her was some cheer for them – but in the loss of Skafloc.
No sign, no word, no sight since that last stricken gaze by Orm’s howe with the winter morning bleak about him. He was alone, ringed in by his deadly foemen, starting out on a quest into the grimmest of lands for a prize that would bring doom on him. Where was he now? Did he live yet, or was his tall form stiff on the ground with ravens tearing out the empty eyes which once had shone alone for her? What hopeless misery drowned his laughter and made him long for death as once he had longed for Freda? Or had he forgotten what he could not endure to remember, abandoned his humanness altogether for the cool oblivion of Leea’s kisses—? No, that could not be, he would not forget his love while he lived.
But lived he yet – and how, and for how long?
‘Skafloc,’ she whispered. ‘Skafloc, I love you. I will always love you.’
Now and again she dreamed of him, as if he stood living before her, their hearts throbbed together and his arms were strong and tender about her. His voice murmured in her ear or rang with the old wild laughter or spoke his gay love verses – She awoke in a black and pitiless night, alone in a strange bed, and lay waiting for the hopeless gray dawn.
She was changed. The life of men seemed a dull and petty round after the eerie glamor of the elf court and the mad glad days of their troll-hunt in a winter world. Thorkel having been christened only so the English would leave him in peace, she rarely saw a priest – and, knowing her heart sinned, was glad of that. Dark and dreary was a church after the forests and hills and sounding sea. She still loved God – and were not the open lands His work, and a church only man’s? – but she could not bring herself to call very often on Him.
Now and then she could not keep from slipping out in the middle of the night, taking a horse, and riding northward. With her witch-sight she might catch a few glimpses of the faerie world – a scuttering gnome, a fleeting shadow, a black longship coasting by. But those she dared hail fled her, and she could get no word of how the war went.
But even so, the briefly seen world, weird and moonstruck, was Skafloc’s. And for a short wonderful while it had been hers.
She kept herself too hard at work for overmuch brooding, and her young healthy body bloomed. As spring came, she could almost feel the same stirring within her that brought back the birds and called forth buds like clenched baby fists. She saw herself in a polished shield and knew she was now more woman than girl – the slim figure becoming stronger and fuller, the breasts rising and swelling, the blood coursing steadier in the smooth lovely cheeks. She was becoming a mother.
Could he who loved her but see her now, in this full glorious bloom – No, no, it is sin. But I love him, I love him so—
The winter went in a fury of rain and pealing thunder. The first light soft green spread over the dark rain-washed trees and fields. The birds came home. Freda saw a remembered pair of storks wheeling puzzledly over Orm’s lands. They had built their nest on his roof. She wept, quietly and gently as the rains of late spring. Her heart felt empty.
No – no, it was filling again, not with the old boundless joy, but with a stiller gladness deepened by sorrow. Her child was growing to life within her. In him – or her, it mattered not – all her ashen hopes rose anew.
She stood alone in twilight with the blossoms of an apple tree over her head, drifting down in a rain of petals with every gentle wind. The winter was gone and spring had come to a haunted land. Skafloc lived in it, in every cloud and shadow, in the dawn and sunset and the high-riding moon, he spoke in the wind and his laughter was in the sea’s voice. There would be winter, and winter again, in the great unending wheel of years. But she bore the summer beneath her heart, and all summers to come.
Now Thorkel made ready for a trading and viking voyage to the east which he and his sons had long planned. But Audun seemed not overly happy about it, and finally one day he said to his father: ‘I cannot go.’
‘What is that?’ cried the landholder. ‘You, who have worked for this and dreamed of it more than any of us, cannot go?’
‘No, I – well, someone is needed about the place.’
‘We have good housecarles. Be not a fool.’
‘But—’ Audun looked uneasily away. ‘Well I remember what happened to Orm’s folk when all the men were gone—’
‘We have plenty of people quickly summoned, as well as near neighbors, which Orm’s garth did not have after his death.’ Thorkel’s shrewd eyes impaled his son. ‘What ails you, lad? Speak the truth. Are you afraid of fighting?’
‘You know I am not,’ flared Audun, ‘and I will kill anyone who says I am. But it is not my will to go this year, and there is an end of that.’
Thorkel nodded slowly. ‘It is the woman Freda, then,’ he said. ‘I thought as much. But she is without folk or wealth.’<
br />
‘What of that? Our house is rich. I myself will have no little money when I have sailed out next summer.
‘She is with child by this viking of whom she will not speak but always seems to think.’
Audun looked angrily at the ground. ‘Again, what of it?’ he mumbled. ‘It was not her fault – nor the child’s, for that matter. She needs someone to help her – yes, and to help her forget that other man who cruelly cast her off. Could I but find him, you would see whether I fear weapon-play!’
‘Well—’ Thorkel shrugged. ‘I cannot do much about your will. Stay behind, then, if you feel you must.’ After a while he added: ‘It is true she has no living kin in England save the evil berserker Valgard, God smite him, but she is of good stock as any in the land. Nor is she without wealth, since I suppose Orm’s fields are hers now – and it were shame they lay fallow. And also, she is a good lass.’
He smiled, but his eyes were troubled. ‘Woo her if you will, then,’ he said, ‘but I hope your luck is better than Erlend’s.’
Some days later, Thorkel sailed. Audun stood on the shore looking after the ship, with longing bitter in his eyes. But when he turned and saw Freda beside him, he felt he had been well repaid.
‘Why do you stay?’ she asked.
His face was hot, but he answered boldly: ‘I think you know.’
She looked away and said naught.
The days grew longer and the trees and ground burst into green life. Warm winds, shouting rains, bird songs and leaping deer and fish silvery in the rivers – flowers, light nights, and the growth of new life – Freda felt the child stirring within her.
Audun was ever oftener by her side. Now and again, in a rush of loneliness and woe, she bade him begone. But his sorrowful eyes brought remorse to her.
He sought to woo her with awkward, lame words she scarcely listened to. But she buried her face in the cool fresh fragrance of the great flower-bunches he gathered for her, and she saw his smile, timid and friendly as a puppy – strange, that so strong and sure a youth was weaker than she.
If she wed him, it would be he that was given to her. He was not Skafloc, who took her and guarded her and gave her of his boundless strength and laughter. He was only Audun.
O Skafloc, Skafloc, unforgotten beloved.
But his memory was becoming a wistful caress, a summer that was past, recalled in the new springtime. He warmed her heart without searing it, the vision was no longer a blinding pain but a deep quiet sorrow on which danced the sun-glints of a lost joy. Lived he or died he, he was forever lost to her, and grief was no way to end such a love as had been theirs. That love lay too deep for tears.
Audun was kind and glad. She liked the boy. And he would be a strong shield for the child, Skafloc’s child.
There came an evening when the two stood on the beach, the sea murmurous at their feet and the sunset all red and gold behind them. Audun took her hands and said with a steadiness new to him: ‘You know I have long loved you, Freda, even before you came here. I have wooed you, and at first you would not listen and then you would not reply. But I ask for an honest answer now, and if it is your wish then I will trouble you no longer. But I love you, Freda. Will you wed me?’
She looked into his eyes and her voice was low and clear: ‘Yes.’
25
In late summer it began to rain, and for days on end the wind scourged the elf-hills and veiled them in a lightning-blinking gray. The trolls in Elfheugh, ever more held near the castle for fear of the outlaw elves, finally could not even leave its walls. They slumped in their rooms or in the halls, drinking and gaming and quarreling and drinking again. Sullen and fearful they were, on edge so that the lightest word might lead to a death battle. And their elf mistresses grew more and more wanton, so that not a day went by without friendships broken and often lives lost over a woman.
Evil rumors muttered along the dim corridors. Illrede – aye, he had fallen, and his grinning head was the new elf standard. Earl Guro could not hold the troll armies together as the king had done, and each time he rallied for a stand he was driven back. A demon, a fiend with a sword of evil and a heart of murder, led the elves to victory over twice their number.
Vendland had fallen, whispered someone, and the elves’ terrible general had ringed in all trolls there and spared not a one. It was said one could walk on troll corpses from end to end of the battlefield.
The troll strongholds in the Northlands were stormed, said another, and – somehow, though they were elf castles and built to stand off any assault – they fell, one after the other, and every troll who lived was put to the sword. A fleet was captured in a Jutish bay and used for raids into Trollheim itself.
The trolls’ allies, or such of them as still survived, were falling away. A company of Shen was said to have turned on its troll companions in Gardariki and slaughtered them. A goblin uprising wiped out three towns – or five or a dozen, the rumors were growing – in Trollheim.
The elves were driving into Valland with the trolls retreating before them – a retreat that became a rout and finally, caught against the sea, a butchery. Whispers went around the castle of the dreadful horse that trod out warriors’ lives, of the hungrily screaming devil in the form of a sword.
Valgard, growing gaunter and grimmer and shorter of speech as the summer wore on, sought to raise his folk’s flagging spirits. ‘The elves have rallied,’ he said. ‘They fight well, and have new sorcerous powers. But it is their last gasp, soon their might will be broken forever.’
But this the trolls knew: that fewer and fewer ships came from across the channel or the eastern sea, and the news they brought got worse and worse until Valgard forbade his folk to speak with the crews; that the outlaw elves under Flam and Firespear grew ever bolder, until a whole army was not safe from their arrows or their swiftly raiding ships and horsemen; that the Irish Sidhe were arming as if for war; that a growing weariness and dull despair and savage hatred of one’s fellow spread poisonously through the castles, fed by the elf women’s bold eyes and their subtle hints.
Valgard raged like a prowling beast. Up and down the great castle he went, from its highest windy towers to its deepest night-black dungeons, snarling, often killing in a burst of blind rage. He felt caged, hemmed in by the misty walls, by the outlaws lurking beyond, by the great and growing elf army whose strength he knew – by his whole life. And naught could he do about it.
No use leading men out against the elves. It was like fighting shadows. They would be gone, but from somewhere an arrow would sing into a troll’s back, a noose tighten about a troll’s neck, a pit open beneath a troll’s horse. Even at the table one was never sure – now and again someone died, belike of poison sneaked into his food by some underhanded trick.
Cunning and patient were the elves, turning their weaknesses into strengths, biding their time. The trolls could not understand them and came more and more to fear the race they thought they had beaten.
Who were now beating them, thought Valgard grimly. But this he kept from his men as much as possible, though he could not stop the frightened whispers and the sullen mutinous anger.
There was naught he could do, save sit in Imric’s high seat draining horn after horn of fiery wine. Leea tended to him, and his horn never seemed to be empty. He slumped in silence, sunken eyes smouldering toward blindness as he drank, until at last he slid senseless to the floor.
Often, though, when he was not yet too drunk to walk, he would slowly lift his great body. Reeling a little, he made his way down the gutted hall where embered fires showed the troll chiefs sprawled like corpses. He took a torch and fumbled down a rough-hewn stair. Leaning on the cold slippery wall, he groped to a certain dungeon door and opened it.
Imric’s white body, now streaked and blackened with clotted blood, showed red against the gloom by the light of the coals just below his feet. The imp tending the fire kept it ever dull and hot, and the earl hung by his thumbs without food or drink. His belly was sunken in and his s
kin taut over the arching ribs, his tongue was black, but the terrible vitality of the immortal would not let him die.
His slant, cloudy-blue eyes rested on Valgard with the unreadable elf-stare that, somehow, always turned the changeling’s heart cold. The berserker snarled to overcome that fear. Then he grinned.
‘You know why I am here,’ he said. His voice was thick and he swayed on his feet.
No word spoke Imric, but hung like one dead. Valgard struck him in the face, a dull heavy blow that seemed unnaturally loud in the dungeon silence. The little imp shrank aside, his eyes and fangs agleam in the dark.
‘You know, if your brain has not yet shriveled in your skull,’ said Valgard. ‘I have been here often enough. I will be here again.’
He took the great whip from its place on the wall and slowly ran the thongs through his hands. His eyes were fever-bright and he licked his lips.
‘I hate you,’ he mouthed. He brought his face close to Imric’s. ‘I hate you for bringing me into the world. I hate you for stealing my heritage. I hate you for being all I can never be – nor would, cursed elf! I hate you because of your evil works. I hate you because your damned fosterling is not at hand for my vengeance and you must suffice – now!’
He lifted the whip. The imp huddled as far into a corner as he could get. Imric made no sound or movement.
When Valgard’s one arm tired, he used the other. And after it was also weary, he turned suddenly, threw down the whip, and left.
The wine was working out of him, but only a great coldness remained where it had been. As he came by a window he heard the roar of the rain.
The troll-hated summer for which he had longed, thinking to lie out in green vales and beside murmuring rivers, and which he had spent in futile sallies against the elves or sitting in the gloom of the castle – the summer was waning at last. But so was Trollheim. There was silence from Valland, but the last word thence had been of a field stark with slaughter.
Would the rain never cease? He shuddered at the cold wet breath through the windows. Lightning glared blinding blue-white outside and the whole building shook to the bellow of thunder.
The Broken Sword Page 20
